1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to light weight, portable, collapsible bookstands, specifically to materials that need to be positioned at an angle to assist the reader to study or read literature.
2. Background of the Invention
This invention is a light weight, portable, collapsible bookstand. Such bookstands have been used by typists and students to facilitate the ease of viewing diagrams or written materials.
To date there has been a number of attempts to provide a remedy for the individual to support study materials in a manner to facilitate easy, comfortable, and portable accoutrements to meet this need. All attempts have produced products with limited success. The majority of known bookstands have several intricate and complicated parts. In order to be commercially viable and to meet the needs of the student or public a bookstand must be engineered with few movable parts, durable, and have the ability to support heavy books and be used for a variety of reading materials. In addition, to meet the need of the user the bookstand must be designed as a one piece unit to avoid the loss of parts. Whereas, most bookstands are designed with several pieces that require assembly before and after use. A bookstand requiring assembly creates the possibility that pieces will be lost preventing the use of the bookstand. The small number of collapsible and portable bookstands that are presently in the marketplace fail to meet the needs of the general public. The bookstands are impractical due to their size and do not support large books in a stable setting.
There is a need for a collapsible, light weight, stable and portable bookstand. In addition, a bookstand must be designed so the reader can view the supported material in comfort when in a seated position.
Inventors have created several types of bookstands to hold reading materials in an open position for study. Several types of collapsible, portable bookstands have been proposed for-example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,497,971 to Spiro (1996) discloses a complex trigonal pyramidal bookstand consisting of more than twelve different parts and require assembly prior and after use. Additional bookstands in this area have been invented to provide support for larger texts, such as, U.S. Pat. No. 308,535 to Vail (1884), U.S. Pat. No. 1,581,742 to Johnson (1926), U.S. Pat. No. 2,973,933 to Howell (1961), U.S. Pat. No. 4,553,728 to Corsello (1985), Although these bookstands are capable of supporting an average book, the pyramid design fails to provide upper support for an average college text or other heavier books, thus when a book is placed on the bookstand it is not stable and if bumped the book could be knocked off the stand. Many bookstand designs that have the pyramid shape will not hold a book if the majority of a large text was open to one side resulting in a book rolling off the stand due to the lack of back support. In addition, these bookstands are expensive to manufacture and are complex in design.
Historically, inventors have attempted to provide a bookstand that is collapsible, light weight, portable in the collapsed position and consumes as little area as possible during use. U.S. Pat. No. 4,880,327 to Sanabria (1989) and U.S. Pat. No. 4,318,527 to Smith (1980) are examples that have failed to meet these needs. These bookstands and others known are bulky and are difficult to use in small confined areas. The totality of all the designs known fail to accomplish the goals of a comprehensive portable, collapsible bookstand. Below is a list of one or more disadvantages that known bookstands suffer from;
(a) Their engineering is complex, thus expensive to manufacture.
(b) The present designs require the user to assemble the structure prior to use and then dismantle the bookstand after use.
(c) Many of the known bookstands have small parts, thus losing a piece may result in the stand being inoperative.
(d) The bookstands that have a high center of gravity may result in the reading material becoming unstable.
(e) Collapsible designs known are not space efficient when users have limited surface area, such as, libraries or desk cubicles, and coffee shops.
(f) Although, many designs are collapsible, when in the collapsed position they are bulky and require two hands or fully occupy one hand to carry the stand.
(g) A majority of the bookstands have a pyramid configuration, thus fail to support the upper section of a large text.